I've Been Loving You For Too Long
by thefollies
Summary: Thirty-one drabbles centering around Jiraiya and Tsunade and the cost of having lived too long.
1. Horizon

**A/N: **I'll be uploading thirty-one 100-word drabbles throughout July, following the themes from the r/Fanfiction 'Dabble in Drabble' daily prompts. Most stories will center on growing old, on regrets, on hope— you get the drill. Title taken from the Otis Redding song.

Prompt 1 is **Horizon**

* * *

From atop the Hokage tower, the horizon stretches to forever. The yellow-red splash looks no different from how it looked forty years back when the Sannin— no, Team Hiruzen— were just about to conquer the world. They were innocents then. War was a vague, looming thing, and they hadn't yet glimpsed its full breadth.

Tsunade drums her fingers on the railings, glancing at her teammate. His smile is still as wide as before. A tad sadder, perhaps.

"Guess it's just us now, huh?"

She exhales. "Yeah."

Jiraiya turns skyward, closes his eyes. A breeze swims through. "I miss it, too."


	2. Celebration

**Prompt 2: Celebration**

* * *

They've grown old, Tsunade thinks, swigging her second bottle of vodka. The fireworks are blinding against the evening sky, and below it, the village is a loud buzzing thing. Thirty years ago, she'd be dead drunk, jaunting through the streets, eagerly drowning herself in a sea of forgetting.

Now, she leans against the man she thought she'd never love, their arms intertwined. There's nothing more she wants than to remember.

"I must've go'en too soft," She slurs. "To wanna' spend the festival with you."

Jiraiya only chuckles. "C'mon, it's better this way."

"Yeah, yeah," She snuggles into his chest. "_Sure_."


	3. Silence

**A/N:** Thank you for the kind words, rueda!

**Prompt 3: Silence**

* * *

They haven't moved from their adjacent seats in the sake place in minutes, but they both feel the seconds pulling them apart, the silence swelling like a gulf between them. Tsunade has her forehead set on the front of her wrist, shoddy fluorescent light drawing shadows around her. Jiraiya can only stare, eyes glazed and afraid, knowing nothing can convince her.

He slides his bottle towards her, ignoring the sting in his eyes, mumbles, "You take care of yourself."

She ignores him, closes her eyes. Something in him plummets. Something about them shatters.

"I won't forgive you if you don't."


	4. Mirror

**Prompt 4: Mirror**

* * *

The motel's bathroom mirror is cracked— the bad kind, all jagged ripples. Tsunade pauses when she first sees it. Stares and stares with a sick fascination until she finds herself stumbling towards it and pressing her face forward until she hovers just above the pointed edges. Every pore pops into existence, her carefully crafted visage magnified in all its past perfection. Then an impulse: she pulls the intricate layers of genjutsu away. Slowly, this time. Her skin pulls and thins and sags. All her false softness into sharp angles, gauntness. Living death.

Tsunade shatters the mirror with a drunken punch.


	5. Thunder

**Prompt 5: Thunder**

* * *

Kumo is a horrible place to be stranded in, even with the two of Konoha's strongest shinobi. Tsunade punches through another layer of rock, only barely keeping the camouflage genjutsu intact. Chakra drains from her like water through a hole, and she slumps against the wall. Behind her, the storm roars.

"How's 'Rochi?"

"We'll have to wait for reinforcements."

Tsunade grimaces. "Bring him to me."

"No can do," He slides down beside her, snakes an arm around her waist. She closes her eyes. "Rest up."

And despite the whipping winds and the voices in her head, she sinks into him.


	6. Ghost

**Prompt 6: Ghost**

* * *

Wandering the world isn't the same as it used to be. There's nothing she's running away from, no child at her heels trying to fix her. She's made her peace with her monsters, but sometimes, she gets the feeling there are some things she still hasn't learned to shake off. In a hotel somewhere in Kusa, the Legendary Sucker fiddles with dice and dreams of a friend, a wild-haired ghost.

_If he'd come back… could things have worked out? Could I have loved him?_

She flicks the cube up the air, catches it twice.

She answers herself with snake eyes.


	7. Quarter

**A/N: **Set during the Second Shinobi World War.

**Prompt 7: Quarter**

* * *

He's been a shinobi for three quarters of his life. Jiraiya has never thought of it until now, has always pretended that he was a shinobi the second he left his mother's womb. It's an uncomfortable thought. In six years, he'll be thirty— the average lifespan of a shinobi at war. He could be dead by then.

He shakes his head, leaps through Konoha's roofs like he's immortal. As if a misstep wouldn't cost him his life.

It won't. He had long sworn it.

He glances at Tsunade trailing after him, eyes slanted. There was so much left to do.


	8. Fantasy

**A/N:** This was supposed to come after 'Silence', but I accidentally skipped it. Whoops.

**Prompt 8 (5, supposedly): Fantasy**

* * *

He sees it sometimes, when she smiles at him and the light touches her a certain way: a glimpse of another world. Their hands aren't sunk in the guts of men. The years crawl, and the seconds linger. A place where he is brave enough to cross the line dividing them.

But Jiraiya is always quick to look away. He digs his hands in his pockets and spouts a bawdy joke, saving his fantasies for cheap whores and cheaper manuscripts. Years and years ago, he was branded the team idiot. Four decades on, he finds that not much has changed.


End file.
